On Nov. 30, 1948, a month after his second birthday, he was diagnosed with polio. And the mother who supported him through the medical ordeal died at the age of 80 on that same date, 50 years later, on Thanksgiving weekend.

Sipolski, who is 67 and lives in Palm Desert, writes about his personal journey and the strength that his mother gave him, in a self-published memoir,

"I suppose the first memory of her was when I was about 5," he writes in the memoir. "We were sitting on the bathroom floor, and I was crying. My older brother, Jim, had dressed and had run out into the warm Illinois sunshine.

"My mother, Iris, was trying to put my steel leg brace on, tying the orthopedic shoe, the leather calf strap, the knee pad, the thigh strap and buckling the steel belt around my waist. The room was hot and the heavy belt bit into my hips as she struggled to pull up my jeans over the shoe and the brace."

Iris Mondy was 30 years old then, living in their hometown of Streator, Ill., where her son had been diagnosed with the dreaded disease.

"Why me, Mom? Why did I have to get polio?" he writes. "She stopped and took my hands in hers. … 'But Kurt, Jesus only chooses the bravest boys. God picked you above all the boys in town.'

"I bit into my lower lip in an attempt to live up to her words, Sipolski writes. "'Am I brave?' I asked. 'Of course you are. And God will always watch out for you.' She pressed her handkerchief to my face, and ran her hand through my blond hair."

Mondy met Sipolski's father, a young soldier, in 1943 while working as a secretary at the newly completed Pentagon in Arlington, Va. "It was there she met President Franklin D. Roosevelt," Sipolski told ABCNews.com.

"The awe of reaching down to shake his powerful hand never left her," said Sipolski.

But Sipolski's father died of a cerebral hemorrhage after serving in World War II, and so in 1951, the family, which included Sipolski and his brother, Jim, moved from Virginia back to a hardscrabble life in Illinois, where they lived with his maternal grandmother.

His mother eventually remarried Bill Mondy, but her professional dreams were dashed. And when her son was diagnosed with polio in 1948, Mondy knew she had to push him to the limits if he was ever to walk again.

Later, Mondy visited Sipolski in California in March 1998, but when returning home, she was in a car accident. The incident triggered a stroke, and she lay alone in her Illinois apartment before worried neighbors found her.

"My mother was hospitalized … for some time, so the phone call from my brother … was not a great surprise," said Sipolski.